Written evidence submitted by Professor Jillian Anable and
Professor Phil Goodwin (SRI0036)
Strategic road investment must allow for continuing climate change, and policy to increase or reduce road traffic.
We have both engaged with the strategic road programme as researchers, research directors, technical witnesses, and advisers to the UK Government and other organisations. A short summary of our experience is included as an Annex. The reason for this submission is to make explicit some interactions of the overall policy context which we judge to be the most important new feature of strategic planning for the road network. They underpin all the Committee’s questions but have been not been given adequate attention. The views expressed are solely our own and do not represent any other person or body.
Summary
In summary, we argue that that:
The key new issue for RIS 3 is a three-way tension between:
A: needing to test all policy and projects against the real possibility of much greater climate change;
and two competing views of what successfully decarbonised transport as a whole would look like:
B: a significant stabilisation and reduction in road traffic; or
C: an even greater increase in road traffic.
The problems, difficulties and opportunities of these illuminate, but do not easily fit into, the structure of ‘scenarios’ developed by the DfT[1]. The scenarios are highly important in showing that a single ‘central’ or ‘most likely’ forecast or projection of projected future traffic is an inadequate and potentially misleading basis for the appraisal of specific projects and wider priorities. They show that all projects must be judged against both ‘high traffic’ and ‘low traffic’ futures and the alternative ways of dealing with them. But policy priorities and decisions about the programme and its projects, and what to do about the three-way tension described, need to be determined by a different sort of discussion.
Narrative A (Adaptation) Further Climate Change
There is a disturbing possibility that global initiatives taken together will fail to hold average temperature change to 1.5
This implies the prospect of fundamental changes to the economic and social geography of the UK (indeed, the world); the transport needs they generate; the operating conditions of transport and its management, including flooding, drought, the needs for flexible infrastructure, coping with emergency movements of large numbers of people, and big changes to the sources of supply of goods and services. The entry point to work on that is the DEFRA Supplementary Guidance[2] of November 2020, advising tests using 2°C and 4°C. The analytical methodologies are contingency planning – essentially war-gaming responses to science-based probabilities of problems – applied to engineering design, economic analysis, robustness and resilience.
There is no suggestion that this range of temperature change is complete – indeed scientific concerns include the real possibilities that there are ‘tipping’ points beyond which climate change accelerates and becomes impossible to halt or reverse. Rather, it provides a framework for preparation for emergencies, a consideration of the changes to the location and design standards of new roads, and the ability to adapt use and management of all existing ones. It will also change economic conditions, real incomes, and the volume, location and operating conditions traffic.
It is difficult to see how the current methods and assumptions of traffic forecasting could be a useful guide to road provision in the context of continuation of the present trajectory of climate change. All the traffic projections in the current traffic scenarios produced by the DfT essentially assume that current climate conditions remain stable over the period to 2060, and in the project appraisal periods typically of 60 years or more. Until now, scheme appraisals have done little more than offer low key claims that each scheme will increase resilience by providing more capacity, without significant changes in expected weather conditions.
The Climate Change Committee Climate has given increasing attention to this issue, most recently in ‘Investment for a well-adapted UK’[3] and its supporting contributory papers, but it has not yet reached the prominence of the CCC’s long-standing focus on ‘mitigation’, ie measures to moderate and prevent climate change. The DfT has recently announced a new planned research hub on transport decarbonisation, which will consider both adaptation and mitigation in research over the next four years[4]. We certainly welcome this, but that does not help decisions now. It is essential that the detailed consideration of continuing and accelerating climate change is given in RIS3 as a whole, and every project in it.
Narrative B (Behaviour) Traffic Reduction.
General or local traffic reduction has been a substantial policy objective for campaigners and some local and national governments for many years, usually supported by arguments of congestion, health, security, cost, efficient use of resources, and commercial vitality. It is associated with the use of financial incentives (taxation, road pricing, and special charges), the reallocation of road capacity between modes, uses and areas, and better enforcement of legal regulation of parking, speed, driving choices and vehicle design. It has specifically entered into discussions about climate change as a result of technical work that the important electrification of vehicles is not sufficient on its own to reach carbon objectives, due to the time required for fully or partially fossil-fuelled vehicles to disappear from the light and heavy vehicle fleets. An increasing succession of studies calculate that car traffic will need to reduce in absolute terms by at least 20% by 2030 in order for the UK surface transport sector to reach a pathway compliant with UK climate legislation[5],
The DfT’s Decarbonisation Strategy[6], as well as emphasising the electrification of vehicles, made some very explicit suggestions for very substantial reductions in road traffic volumes in towns, proposing 50% of all urban journeys to be by active modes (mostly walk but also a substantial increase in cycling), together with improvement of public transport overall, which would make walking, cycling and public transport an attractive first choice for all able to do so. There would be an increase in car occupancy, and the application of land use planning to reduce unnecessary travel. Although this was mostly urban, such developments would also have spin-off effects on the interurban road network, because of the very high proportion of interurban trips which are carried out by cars owned in urban areas. This, together with it improved interurban public transport, and changes in living and working patterns, would give ‘the possibility of reductions, or at least stabilisation, more widely’.
We would support the possibility and necessity of such reductions, and do not treat it as a cosmetic or careless discussion. If applied consistently nationally, and in a way designed to improve living conditions and public acceptability, it would contribute to carbon objectives and is also supported by co-benefits in terms of congestion, health and efficient use of resources. Taking it seriously would imply a quite different approach to traffic forecasts, and have significant effects on the appraisal of projects for the strategic road network.
However, at present the specific traffic developments encompassed in the revised traffic projections do not include any scenario which would have this effect. This seems to be partly because, as modelled, the factors leading to traffic growth are currently deemed to be stronger than those which could produce traffic reduction, and also because the specific overall policy initiatives which could produce such results had not yet been specified in sufficient breadth and detail, being outside the ‘committed and funded’ policy assumptions which drive the scenarios. Some additional information[7] provided by DfT in January 2023 seeks to extend that analysis to estimate the combined effect of different levels of policy commitment with the different scenarios, but none of these distinguish urban and non-urban locations, or identify the scale which could produce traffic reduction of the type envisaged. It is not yet clear whether this is a prelude to a conclusion that the traffic reduction envisaged in the Transport Decarbonisation Strategy cannot be achieved and should be abandoned, or is a temporary feature of as yet uncompleted analysis. Our view is that traffic reduction remains a feasible, necessary and achievable objective, but the analysis as yet reported does not give sufficient detail to be able to assess the methods of achieving it.
Narrative C (‘Cars’) A continuation and increase of traffic growth.
The third main narrative is that there could be significantly greater increase in traffic than has so far been experienced, and that it should be policy to provide for – or even foster – this. It would be enabled by a reduction in the cost of driving, and potentially an increase in its attractiveness, assuming that electric and possibly autonomous[8] vehicles become sufficiently accessible, cheap and inclusive. The co-benefits of such an increase in traffic growth, its supporters argue, is that it would give support to the motor and some other industries, spread the advantages of car use to wider groups of the population that do not currently have it, and contribute to economic growth generally.
The contribution to economic growth would however be offset by a side effect of this narrative, namely that a high further increase in traffic levels would increase congestion, perhaps substantially, and therefore raise the question of additional provision of more road capacity, both on the strategic and local networks, than currently envisaged. This raises an analytical and policy problem that the UK has had some experience of, especially in the period 1989-1994 following adoption of the road programme ‘Roads for Prosperity’[9]. The traffic forecasts were much greater than previously, as indeed was the proposed road programme, but it was not possible to envisage an increase in capacity which would be large enough to match the increase in traffic. Therefore throughout the planning period there would be an increase in congestion. Local authorities in the South East in particular calculated that their local roads would simply not be able to cope with the increased traffic flowing off the expanded motorways onto the local network. This was accepted by the then Government in 1994 and the plans were scaled back[10], in the context also of public expenditure constraints.
The consequence of seeking to respond to high forecast traffic growth by a high – but not high enough – road programme inevitably has the danger that the benefits of improving conditions have to be reformulated as slowing down the pace of deterioration. This presents problems for public acceptability and economic analysis. Rather than adding agglomeration benefits to travel time savings, both would experience a decline. In these circumstances ‘net benefits’ in the appraisal really means ‘increasing net costs, but not by as much as predicted in the baseline’. Travellers would continue to experience worsening conditions, and feel that the promised benefits had not been delivered.
The relationship between A, B and C and RIS3
B and C are, broadly, mutually exclusive. One could imagine either evolving into the other, but manifestly there is not going to be both a high overall increase in road traffic driven by wider car ownership, and also widespread reductions in traffic and stabilisation overall. It is also not realistic to assume that a substantial increase in car ownership and use would be associated with a simultaneous increase in public transport use, walking and cycling.
These pathways have entirely different requirements for road building and traffic management. The policy choice between them should be judged by considerations of compatibility with carbon imperatives, effectiveness, inherent internal consistency, public acceptability, value for money, implications for public finances, economic and social welfare, equity and other Government priorities. Logically this has to be determined before the main lines of RIS3 can be judged, and with high profile, well informed, public and political discussion. They cannot be assumed already to have been decided, or to be glossed over as only important in the long term. The questions which these three narratives raise are still open.
This suggests that the method used in 2006 would be a better approach. Then, the DfT carried out a widely-respected analysis of the costs and benefits of different strategies for the Strategic Network as a whole as part of the Eddington Review[11]. This showed that the scale of road expansion needed to cope with traffic forecasts would be about 80% less in the case where the costs of vehicle use were matched to the cost of congestion, due to the small reduction in the overall volume of traffic and its more efficient location in space and time. Taking account of carbon as well as congestion would make it very timely to carry out a similar study now. This would give a much better basis for decisions about the overall size and structure of the road network, within which specific road schemes, and alternative transport improvements, would logically fit.
But although B and C are mutually exclusive, that does not apply to A. The reality of further undesirable climate change means that both these main alternative strategies need to be stress tested, and adaptable, to allow for significant global warming.
The three narratives approach, it seems to us, is more illuminating and suitable for informed discussion about strategic visions than to try to devise separate policy responses to all the multiple and – and still multiplying - scenarios of projected traffic volumes, and less liable to the serious errors that would arise from ignoring further climate change and policy on the size and direction of traffic levels.
We would advise that the Committee - and indeed the Government – should give much greater attention to the questions of what to do about continuing climate change, and the policy choice between increasing and reducing traffic, as the highest strategic importance, and logically prior to any sensible decisions on the shape and content of RIS3.
Annex.
Qualifications and Background
Jillian Anable (BA, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Transport and Energy at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds leading a large portfolio of projects on mobility, energy and climate change policy. She is currently a co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre, co-director of the Centre for Research on Energy Demand Solutions, Board Member of Transport & Environment, Steering Group Member of the UK Government’s Electric Vehicle and Energy Taskforce and Member of Scotland’s Just Transition Commission. Previous positions include Scientific Advisor to UK Research and Innovation’s Energy Scientific Advisory Committee, Expert Advisor to the Northern Ireland Panel on the Future of Energy, Member of the Review Board for the National Transport Strategy for Scotland and Strategic Advisor on Climate Change to the Commission for Integrated Transport.
Phil Goodwin BSc (Econ) PhD (Civil Engineering), FCILT, FIHT is Emeritus Professor of Transport Policy at UCL and UWE, was formerly Director of the Oxford University Transport Studies Unit, a transport planner at the GLC, a non-Executive Director of the Port of Dover, and was Senior Fellow (Climate Change) of the Foundation for Integrated Transport 2020-2022. He was a member of the authoritative DfT Advisory Body SACTRA, and continues as a member of the DfT’s current Joint Analysis Development Panel, JADP, dealing with forecasting, modelling, appraisal and strategic analysis. He contributed to WelTAG, the new road and transport appraisal guidelines developed by the Welsh Government, and has contributed to continuing discussion of carbon and transport appraisal of specific road proposals, notably Stonehenge-A303, the Lower Thames Crossing, and local initiatives in several areas. .
We were the two technical witnesses called by the Transport Action Network, TAN, in its high court challenge on RIS2, our evidence specifically being on the ‘De Minimis’ doctrine which dismisses the significance of the road programme to carbon objectives on the basis that the amounts of carbon are a very small proportion of the total amount of carbon emitted by the whole economy. We argued that the figures were underestimates and the comparator wrong. At the time, there was no specific carbon target for transport, and the challenge was lost. But it is now accepted that a steep carbon reduction pathway for transport is essential, and our evidence regains salience.
We have both contributed to and support other submissions relative to this Inquiry, notably that by Transport for the Quality of Life (of which we are both associates); and the Road Investment Scrutiny Panel, RISP, a group of professors convened by Professor Glenn Lyons of UWE[12]. We have also engaged separately with a submission from the Stonehenge Alliance, , and the work by Professor Greg Marsden of Leeds University.
This Submission is solely our own views and does not necessarily represent any other official or voluntary group.
February 2023
Endnotes